“We hope for eternal friendship,” Suzuki said through a Japanese interpreter. His city’s gift is a tree that is much-loved at home and representative of his country, he added.

Dilkens called it a “gift of friendship,” and he said that, 30 years after becoming sister cities, “a very special relationship has developed” between the two cities located more than 10,000 km apart.

The five-day visit of the 30-plus strong Fujisawa delegation wraps up Tuesday, two days before a visiting delegation from Mannheim, Germany, is set to arrive.

Tsuneo Suzuki, left, Mayor of Fujisawa, Japan and Drew Dilkens, Mayor of Windsor are shown during a tree dedication ceremony at the Jackson Park in Windsor on June 26, 2017.Dan Janisse /
Windsor Star

To help celebrate Canada’s 150th and Windsor’s 125th birthdays, invitations to come visit in 2017 were sent out to all 12 of the city’s global twins.

“We got six responses,” said Coun. Fred Francis, chairman of city council’s international relations committee. Delegations from Changchun, China, and Gunsan, South Korea, will follow Mannheim, and Francis said visiting delegations are also expected this year from Las Vueltas, El Salvador, and Ohrid, Macedonia.

Rather than government-to-government relationships, the sister city program is a grassroots effort led by citizens, said longtime former city councillor David Cassivi who was in Italy in 1977 to sign Windsor’s partnership with Udine. Cassivi, who was Windsor’s first international relations committee chairman from 1990 to 2006, said the program was also designed to connect Windsorites with the places from which they came.

Fujisawa becoming Windsor’s eighth sister city was the brainchild of hair salon owner Antoine Greige. Working at the time for Ezio Tambereni and with Sadaaki Tahashi from Japan, a hair show in Windsor in 1981 led to discussions for a more formal relationship with the Japanese city of 420,000.

Such sister relationships, said Greige, are “good for the economy and they bring us new ideas.” Japanese hairdressers have been making regular trips to Windsor for training stints of up to six months, and, for the past nine years, Windsor has played host to high school students from Fujisawa’s Misono School.

Half of Windsor’s sister cities have post-secondary exchange or collaborative agreements with the University of Windsor.

“The world revolves around relationships … it’s important to establish them,” said Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Matt Marchand. Creating such ties to another country or region is a big advantage when it comes to business investment opportunities, he said.

“These are difficult times in the world — this is another way to humanize people, and it makes your city known to other people,” said City of Windsor CAO Onorio Colucci.

Francis said his committee has $15,000 a year to spend, both for travel abroad and to host visiting delegations. Some of those recent annual allocations were set aside in anticipation of this year’s extra birthday activity, he added.

Visiting delegations pay their own way to get here, while the host city covers accommodation and local events.

Like Windsor, Fujisawa has an automotive sector, industry and manufacturing and it lies on the water. “The Japanese are very, very hospitable, they like people and they like to party,” said Greige, who hosted an outdoor dinner for the international guests and dozens more at his home Sunday night.

Windsor’s sisters are an international potpourri of municipalities, ranging from Changchun with a population of 7.6 million to Las Vueltas, a village of less than 700. Cassivi said the latter was twinned in 1987 as a show of solidarity during a period of civil strife in Central America. More Salvadorans live in Windsor than in Las Vueltas.

A number of Windsor’s twins have global standing, including France’s Saint-Etienne, a UNESCO “Town of Art and History;” Mannheim — a UNESCO “City of Music;” and Ohrid, a city of 42,000 and declared UNESCO heritage site.

The Udine Friulian Fountain at the foot of Ouellette Avenue was a gift from that city in appreciation of aid from Windsor following a massive earthquake in 1980. The riverfront Goat Fountain has its original in Lublin, Poland.

Windsor’s first sister city relationship was with Granby in Quebec (1956). Others: Coventry, England (1963); Saltillo, Mexico (1994). Gunsan was the most recent in 2004.

Fujisawa has three other sister cities, in the United States, China and South Korea.

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